Ann Sinnott of Authentic Equity Alliance vs EHRC Judicial Review of incorrect Equality Act guidance

[R0wantrees]

The presiding judge decided that this should go straight to a 1-day oral Permissions Hearing.

This hearing will decide whether or not AEA can proceed to Judicial Review of EHRC and will also rule on request for a costs cap (to protect AEA) should the case go forward.

AEA about the case,
"Official sources provide unlawful guidance on the 2010 Equality Act!
Yes, you read that right! It's shocking, isn't it?

For nearly 10 years, unlawful guidance on the 2010 Equality Act (EA2010) has been displayed on the website of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) and on the Government Equalities Office (GEO) website for 5 years.

Over these ten years, the guidance has been widely accessed and further disseminated by countless organisations of all types. As a result, the unlawful guidance is reflected in the equality policies of organisations and institutions throughout the UK.

EHRC and GEO guidance is in breach of EA2010, Schedule 3, Sections 26, 27 and 28

This is a legal case to ensure that EA2010 guidance accurately reflects the Act.

The Complainant is Authentic Equity Alliance (AEA), a Community Interest Company established to promote and further the interests of women and girls."
Website: aealliance.co.uk/

Ann Sinnott (founder/director) twitter.com/AnnMSinnott

Twitter live tweeting of case via #AEAvEHRC and #IStandWithAnnSinnott

I cannot understand why society is pressing for these to be gender not sexed based and on a self ID basis (which is the aim and what has happened a lot already).

A Member of the British Empire medal holder has declared women to be pig ignorant. It seems that is all it takes.

If you want to have the right as an individual to a single-sex space, then the Equality Act is the wrong law to look at. I think you'd need legislation to create that right so you can sue a service provider for not segregating. At the moment, you can only sue them for segregating.

This is what we have to do. The EA is not sufficient to safeguard women, and I am not convinced lobbying services one by one is enough.

Women and girls need a separate piece of legislation, stipulating when single sex must be in place, to safeguard women and girls against men.

It was a sweet, but naive, notion, that it all might work out, with just the permission for single sex services to exist, but that belief did not foresee this aggressive attempt at colonisation.

It also did not foresee just how bold porn-addled men and boys would get and what modern technology allows. I am not just talking about those calling themselves women or girls here, but the male class more widely. There is now an increased need for safe spaces for women and girls, and we therefore now need separate legislation for the female half of the population, taking modern developments into account.

Oldcrone The existence of the single sex and gender reassignment exemptions and how they interact was what I thought this case was seeking to clarify.
Yes I did too, and it didn't really clarify that well. I think partly because the judge didn't want to go there without specific cases and said that litigation around specific cases where a specific woman can demonstrate harm/disadvantage as a result of the guidence would be the way to argue it.

'The ‘Feminist’ section of Mumsnet became the unofficial base for radicalising ordinary women who knew no more than what the leading figures were telling them.'

Usual patronising sexist shit.

Ordinary women - so stupid, so naive! Jeez this movement is really big on raging misogyny.

Who are the leaders, that's what I want to know? I'd love to meet them.

It was a sweet, but naive, notion, that it all might work out, with just the permission for single sex services to exist, but that belief did not foresee this aggressive attempt at colonisation.

Yes, there was an assumption that service providers would want to be allowed to provide single sex spaces for women and girls, and all the law needed to do was ensure that this provision was legal. Nobody involved in drafting this law seems to have foreseen that the service providers would want to accommodate males in such spaces to the detriment of the female users they were designed for.

Ordinary women.

Says it all really. How upsetting.

'The ‘Feminist’ section of Mumsnet became the unofficial base for radicalising ordinary women who knew no more than what the leading figures were telling them.'

Patronising. And also wrong.

Swimminginlanes
don't think that is true. Case by case is not person by person.

I know this always get undermined in twatter arguments but it is the service providers right to use the exception.

Yes service providers can use the exceptions, but the ruling seemed to be on the side of the starting assumption being to include a trans person as the acquired gender. I wasn't basing it on twitter arguments, but on the live tweeting today, plus the statutory code of practice section on gender reassignment exceptions, which has been confirmed as lawful today.

Will there be a written version of the judgement?

'The ‘Feminist’ section of Mumsnet became the unofficial base for radicalising ordinary women who knew no more than what the leading figures were telling them.'

I don't know who the 'leading figures' are but the piss-poor, circular, bad-faith and fallacious arguments from Trans Rights Activists seen on here are what changed my mind on this subject.

"ordinary women" can see when people are lying to them.

Jeez this movement is really big on raging misogyny.

They hate women, and at the same time they claim they want to be women. Why? It makes no sense.

Oh crikey.

'Everyone agrees it is unprecedentedly toxic but, just as Donald Trump pretended after Charlottesville, this is not an issue where ‘both sides’ can be considered equivalent.'

So having said that lots of the women who believe that having single sex stuff where warranted, are 'ordinary' women who have been radicalised...

To compare those women to Charlottesville which was-

Triggered by a man shooting dead 9 black congregants in a church (that would be the sort of thing a woman on here would do then)

And in response to removing some statues there was an alt right rally with 'Some groups chanted racist and antisemitic slogans and carried weapons, Nazi and neo-Nazi symbols, the Valknut, Confederate battle flags, Deus Vult crosses, flags, and other symbols of various past and present anti-Islamic and anti-Semitic groups' (so that's the same as what women on here do)

And where a man drove his vehicle into counter protesters on purpose killing one and injuring 19. Which is what ordinary women on MN do.

Note the person who shot the churchgoers was a man. The person who drove into the crowd was a man. Looking at pics it's overwhelming man man man. Skimming wiki looking at the players- male names.

So to be clear 'normal' women on mumsnet have been directly compared to a bunch of violent men who were involved in 10 murders in these connected events, injuring many more, marching with guns wearing swastikas, and who I reiterate were mainly, vastly mainly men.

People are buying these comparisons? If they are they they really have lost their common sense faculties tbh.

I don't know who the 'leading figures' are but the piss-poor, circular, bad-faith and fallacious arguments from Trans Rights Activists seen on here are what changed my mind on this subject.

Yes, here and twitter. No substance to their position. Apart from what they want. They're blinded by it.

It was a sweet, but naive, notion, that it all might work out, with just the permission for single sex services to exist, but that belief did not foresee this aggressive attempt at colonisation.

It also did not foresee just how bold porn-addled men and boys would get and what modern technology allows. I am not just talking about those calling themselves women or girls here, but the male class more widely. There is now an increased need for safe spaces for women and girls, and we therefore now need separate legislation for the female half of the population, taking modern developments into account.

It was brought up in the WESC, by Kathleen Stock, Naomi Cunningham or Nic Williams (can’t remember exactly who) that a change in the law to open up women’s spaces/services should properly occur after it can be satisfied that no harm will come to women because of it.
But, it didn’t happen that way.

Yes service providers can use the exceptions, but the ruling seemed to be on the side of the starting assumption being to include a trans person as the acquired gender. I wasn't basing it on twitter arguments, but on the live tweeting today, plus the statutory code of practice section on gender reassignment exceptions, which has been confirmed as lawful today.

There are no gender reassignment exceptions.

To clarify, the exceptions are SINGLE SEX. The judge said there is no automatic entitlement to be included as the opposite sex because of gender reassignment.

The code does not, as C suggests, make any suggestion go "automatic" entitlement to access on the basis of acquired gender. Exclusion is permissible when a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim, eg. of privacy & decency.

At the end of the day it's about boundaries, respect and those who choose to violate them.
Regardless of all the legal arguments, many women, from teenagers to senior citizens, choose not to be undressed in front of, touched by or sleep alongside unknown males. The majority of males respect that. Some born males do not. Women's feelings will never change, no matter how often women are coerced, intimidated, bullied or pressurised.

There are young girls being sexually abused that desperately need spaces away from males. Imagine how they will feel being forced to get changed with males, forced to sleep amongst males on school trips, etc.

Imagine women who are terrified of males because of past experiences, violence, rape, sexual assault etc. Imagine how they'll feel having no safe space away from males.

Not that we even need excuses, but these are the people this effects the most.

Now imagine being the kind of person that laughs at and taunts those women and girls. Imagine finding their distress hilarious

Now imagine being the kind of person that laughs at and taunts those women and girls. Imagine finding their distress hilarious

Well yes but all the ☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️

It was brought up in the WESC, by Kathleen Stock, Naomi Cunningham or Nic Williams (can’t remember exactly who) that a change in the law to open up women’s spaces/services should properly occur after it can be satisfied that no harm will come to women because of it.
But, it didn’t happen that way.

That is surely imagining utopia. Not relevant to anything in our lifetimes.
I am personally unconvinced that male aggression and/or sexual urges will ever not need to be kept away from women and girls, but that is a different conversation.

The ordinary women on MN radicalised thing.

It's sex stereotypes/ gender role.

Women
Probably mums
Probably middle aged
Probably straight and traditional

So they must have been corrupted.

That's sexism/ misogyny/ ageism / this is what mums are like.

Never seen as lots of different women with different backgrounds jobs inserests sexualities etc etc and with minds of their own, capable of independent thought.

So yet again it's shown that stereotypes are very important in all of this.

@Swimminglanes

To clarify, the exceptions are SINGLE SEX. The judge said there is no automatic entitlement to be included as the opposite sex because of gender reassignment.

The code does not, as C suggests, make any suggestion go "automatic" entitlement to access on the basis of acquired gender. Exclusion is permissible when a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim, eg. of privacy & decency.

EHRC: ”a service provider provides single-sex services. If you are accessing a service provided for men-only or women-only, the organisation providing it should treat you according to your gender identity. In very restricted circumstances it is lawful for an organisation to provide a different service or to refuse the service to someone who is undergoing, intends to undergo or has undergone gender reassignment”

Exclusion is permissible when a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim eg of privacy and decency are the ‘very restricted circumstances’ the EHRC refer to above.
So, segregating by sex to preserve privacy and decency fall under ‘very restricted circumstances’, and they shouldn’t be put off by thinking ‘very restricted’ is a high standard to overcome.

Discussion of justifying an exception based on ‘a broad range of sex’ and ‘a narrower range of gender reassignment’ elsewhere, have caused some confusion.
I think I follow your argument that the single sex exception relates to both sex and gender reassignment and can be invoked for both. EA2010 states that the reasonable objection to the presence of a member of the opposite sex is a legitimate aim, and the judge today clarified that could relate to preserving privacy and decency.

So now we need to persuade SPs they can and should do it.

It sure would have been handy witha judicial review to, not only clarify what the law is, but also compel the EHRC to publish clear guidance on it...

@OldCrone

Jeez this movement is really big on raging misogyny.

They hate women, and at the same time they claim they want to be women. Why? It makes no sense.

Quite simply, because they don't realise that they have no idea what being female and living as a female entails.

They identify as women now but they were raised as male so their formative life experience is of having their voice and narrative take precedence over that of female girls and women, of women being something external to observe and define not something internal to experience and be.

That gives them utter confidence that their own conception of womanhood (an experience entirely of the mind and untempered by a million day-to-day interactions with other humans treating you as a woman) is more real than our messy experience of womanhood that comes from actually being a woman in a world where we are treated and seen as such.

Female-bodied people are half the world and that should mean we are visible and undeniable, but it actually means they don't think they need to listen because we are so everyday they assume they already know all about us. But what they really know is the female characters in films and tv (scripted by men), and female public figures in papers (described by and written about by men) and the female characters in the comics and books (written by men).

Still because they think they know they see no reason to ask us what we actually think and who we really are; as far as they are concerned they already know.

So the anger and resentment they feel when we assert our own reality of womanhood ahead of theirs is because they don't accept it is reality and therefore they interpret a female simply stating her reality as an attack: at best an unpleasant irritation, at worst something that jeopardises the legitimacy of the trans vision of womanhood as a definition you adopt from the inside by contrasting it to the lived experience of womanhood in a world that defines you as a woman from the outside.

It's the same reason women's groups are never consulted about the impact on female people of including trans identified males in the functional definition of women and girls. Why it's never considered there could be a material difference in outcome between someone who has been living in a female body and being treated like a girl and then a woman from birth, and someone who has wanted to have a female body and wanted to be treated like a girl or a woman but never in fact experienced it. Because they think they already know. So when we disagree it doesn't make them question their assumptions, it just proves to them they were right not to ask us because there we go, getting it wrong.

And it's why they get pissed off when we do speak up. As far as they are concerned we can't possibility have a valid objection based on our different life experiences so we must be motivated by malice. We are difficult and contrary, causing trouble by giving misguided or malicious opinions about womanhood and the female experience when for goodness sake, it's not like people don't already know perfectly well all about normal, boring, everyday women!

Well said, blibby. I would just add porn to that. The aspect we are never supposed to mention...